MidPeril
by YonderB
Summary: Oneshot. AU. Cloud smiled sweetly. "Nothing like a heart-to-heart during mid-peril." "Quite," agreed Leon. No pairing.


Screaming sirens and screeching breaks and metal assaulted sensitive ears as thirty-odd police cars tore through barren wasteland, clouds of red dust flying into the sky, spindly trees and cacti watching silently as the lawmen's vehicles still were unable to catch up with that little black topless off-road car that they were all following.

"Listen," said the one seated in the passenger seat of the little black topless off-road car, the sirens still blaring behind them but barely audible over the roar of the engine beneath the two in the little black car. His blue eyes were almost an inhuman shade of aqua, and his blond hair styled in an almost insane manner that was barely disturbed by the wind rushing past. "I'm not one to say 'I told you so', _but_--"

"Then don't," grunted the one driving the little black topless off-road car, grey-blue eyes hidden behind sunglasses, a single long scar across the bridge of his nose, his shoulder-length brown hair flying away from his face as the wind rushed by. "Your life is hanging by a thread anyway."

"Yes," agreed the blond one calmly, the little black car swerving so sharply to the side it was left on two wheels for a heart-stopping moment before it fell back on four wheels and continued tearing away from the hoard of police cars still chasing it, a cloud of choking red dust left in it's wake."But the thing is, that thread is named '_Squall Leonhart's driving abilities_'," the blond said. "And I don't trust that thread."

"I told you not to use my real name in public," grunted the driver, the car letting out a roar as it soared over a fallen tree and slammed into the road beneath it and continued tearing through the wasteland. "It's _Leon_. I told you."

The blond let out a quiet grunt and rose his hands in surrender-- or at least, rose them up as much as he could with his wrists cuffed securely to the door beside him.

"Fine, fine, Mister Leon Leonhart, sir," the blond mocked uninterestedly. He promptly let out a squeak and ducked as a passing tree branch made to decapitate him in a streak of spiky brown branches.

"Watch out," Leon hummed smugly as he tore the car around another sickening turn and the blond straightened up in his seat. "Maybe these trees have heard about that bounty on your head, Mister Cloud Strife," he mocked.

Cloud glared his burning, strangely-coloured eyes at the brown-haired driver as the car hit a rather nasty bump and was left in mid-air for a second before it slammed bodily into the lifeless red dirt once more and continued tearing onwards. The blond would've done the juvenile thing and poked his tongue out at the other man, but, in this situation, he'd probably accidentally bite it off because of a particularly nasty jolt of the car, so, he just glared instead.

"_Listen_," sighed Cloud, leaning back against the slightly torn up passenger seat, shifting both hands in a vein attempt to stop the cuffs digging into his wrists, blue eyes fixed purely on the other male. "Why don't you just give up? Esteemed bounty hunter Leon or not, you're never going to get that bounty for me."

"What makes you think so?" returned Leon calmly, the back-end of the car slamming bodily into a tree, making both men jump, but the sturdy vehicle continuing to tear through the red dirt and spindly plants like no other.

"This is the sixth time you've--" A rather sickening hair-pin turn. "--had me in your custody," Cloud said with a small scowl, rotating his left shoulder, both arms contorted into slightly painful angles from where they were, cuffed by the wrist to the door. "We've been in each other's company for a total of nineteen days--"

"You've been counting?" blinked Leon, grey-blue eyes flickering to the other male for a second before snapping back to the road-- or the lack of one-- before him once more.

"Of course," huffed Cloud, as though what the other male had said was an insult. "Three days the first time, before I fell out that window and survived to curse you out and run for it. Two days the second time, then I stole that other bounty hunter's car while he was trying to kill you –and he gave you such a flattering scar, too. I might go thank him–. Four days the third time--"

"Yeah, yeah, I get it," snapped Leon, making another sharp swerve so the car wouldn't slam into a particularly large and sturdy boulder. The way Cloud listed it, it made Leon sound like he was a clumsy bounty hunter. He wasn't. He was one of the best! It was just... Cloud was very good at slipping out from between his fingers just at the most inopportune moments.

"_Really_!" sighed the blond male thoughtfully as the car lurched over another fallen tree, bright blue eyes staring fixedly out of the slightly battered windshield. "You're the only bounty hunter who is _determined_ to catch and _keep_ me." Cloud looks smug for a moment. "Usually they give up after the second time I give them the slip."

"He said I could take all the time I wanted to get you and bring you in," was the quiet, flat statement in reply.

Blue eyes slid to the side to stare at the bounty hunter's profile. "You're _special_, Leon," Cloud sang, a certain something dying the edges of his words, making the sweet sentence seem more than ominous.

"_Dryhg Oui_," the bounty hunter grunted in semi-sarcastic thanks.

Cloud smiled sweetly. "Nothing like a heart-to-heart during mid-peril."

"Quite," agreed Leon, grey-blue eyes glancing up into the rear-view mirror at the hoard of police-cars still following them, and getting closer by the minute.

The blond ducked another tree branch and sighed, eying the other male curiously as the car flew over a small dip in the landscape and slammed once more into red dirt, flying over it in a thick dust cloud. "How long have the cops been after you?" Cloud asked, watching the other male curiously.

The bounty hunter tears around a particularly stomach-churning corner as so none of them would have a particularly close relationship with a large patch of cacti and continued driving.

"_Famm?_" the blond sang. Both men were masters at language. It kind of came in useful with their occupations.

"Fraud, breaking and entering, theft, impersonating a federal officer, and quite a few other minor offences and a few bigger ones," Leon huffed, grey-blue eyes fixed resolutely through his sunglasses and through the windscreen.

An impressed whistle was all he got in reply.

The car was now just tearing forward in a straight line and the blond twisted himself around to look behind them. Quite the wreckage was behind them, many of the less-than-country-worthy police-cars left in ditches, wedged between trees, or piled up together; only around eight still following the little black topless car.

"You got any skeletal injuries in the past?" Leon said quickly as he continued driving resolutely forward, knuckles turning white around the steering wheel.

Blue eyes blink. "A couple."

"Which one is the worst?" the bounty hunter hisses, one hand flying off the wheel to dig around in his pocket.

"Broken leg at twelve and a dislocated shoulder," Cloud says, trying to contort his hands and yank his wrists from the stainless steel cuffs binding him to the car. No dice.

"When did you dislocate your shoulder?" snaps Leon, yanking out what the blond recognised as the keys to the handcuffs from his pocket and holding them between his teeth.

"When you _pushed_ me out the window," Cloud snaps. Another yank. Nope.

The roar of the engine picked up and the blond finally glanced through the windscreen and his usually tanned and admittedly pretty face paled. Oh, no. Oh, _fuck_ no. He _wouldn't_--

Blue eyes snap to Leon, who was silently unclipping his seat-belt with one hand, before undoing Cloud's too, grey-blue eyes staring fixedly forward.

Cloud paled further. He _would_.

The little black car, still followed by at least seven police-cars, tore forward, engine becoming louder, stronger, as it continued streaming forward, clouds of red dust flying up behind it in it's wake, as it unflinchingly few forward- right for a cliff and thin air.

"You're insane!" screamed Cloud from his place, yanking at his cuffs, still bound to the car door. He yanked so hard he could feel blood making them slip around his wrists. "You don't get your money if I'm dead! He said _alive and kicking_ didn't he?! Sure, you get half of it for my corpse! But, still! Leon, he wanted to kill me himsel--!"

"STRIFE, SHUT THE FUCK UP."

And with that, the car soared off the cliff and plummeted down toward the lake a few hundred metres beneath.

Three weeks later, Leon stumbled into a small station with another male, one hand fisted in the other male's spiky red hair, the other hand grasping his arm, which was cuffed behind the red-head's back, the same as his other.

"_Ooh_" chimed the brown-haired person behind the protective sheet of glass by the station door, brown hair styled in spikes that were pointed in every direction, feet up on his paper-cluttered desk, bright aqua eyes alight with curiosity. "Who ya got, Leon?"

"Just this one, Sora," shrugged the bounty hunter, hand dropping from unruly spikes of red hair. Leon's captive snarled quietly, burning green eyes glaring silently to the side, a teardrop tattoo under each eye.

"Did he give you any trouble?" Sora asked with genuine curiosity, standing up, unsettling one of his hodgepodge piles of paper, which promptly teetered and fell to the floor in a crash of undeniably important papers.

A young man wearing a uniform from the back of the station took the red-head off Leon's hands, and the bounty-hunter shrugged noncommittally, ignoring the loud swearing and sounds of the red-head's steel-toed boots meeting the guard's stomach and the sounds of more guards running in. "Can I have my money, Sora?" Leon asked.

"Money?" blinked the brown-haired innocent.

The bounty hunter nodded.

"Oh!" gasped Sora. "The _MONEY_."

The bounty hunter nodded again as the younger male clapped his hands together and ducked under his paper-cluttered desk, muffled muttering and thuds being caught by Leon's acute ears.

Quite suddenly, there was a rather loud _THUMP_ and the sound of a vile curse which was far too nasty to have fallen from Sora's lips.

A head of wavy but spiky blond hair poked out from under the desk, a hand plastered against his temple- and the young male with Sora's face staggered to his feet with an "Ow, god-_ow!_"

"That's why people usually don't sleep under desks, Roxas," Leon sighs, addressing Sora's twin as he listened to the brown-haired sibling get comfortable in the little nest of papers the two of them had made under the desk for midday-naps.

"Yeah, yeah," grunted the blond uninterestedly, wrenching an envelope out from under a rather unbalanced pile of yellow envelopes, which, remarkably did not fall over. Roxas handed the large envelope over to Leon via a small hole in the glass, and the older brunet took it with a nod of thanks.

The bounty hunter sighed and flicked through the wad of cash in the envelope before folding it and slipping it into his pocket.

Roxas flopped into the paper-cushoned seat behind him and placed his feet under the table, where a quiet grunt of annoyance was heard. "So, you want another assignment?" asked the younger blond. "Or are you gonna go back after Strife?"

Grey-blue eyes glance away and Leon shrugs.

"I know you won't listen to me, but you shouldn't have uncuffed him before you hit the water last time," grunts the young blond, crossing his legs and the heel, another grunt sounding from under the desk, Roxas interlinking his fingers calmly on his lap. "You knew he was going to run for it."

The young blond sighs and leans back in his chair. "Should've let him drown and collected the award for his corpse."

The bounty hunter bows his head, turning away from the younger male, walking for the door, where he paused, his hand placed against the door-handle. After a second, Leon snorts quietly, Roxas's aqua eyes, identical to Sora's, look up and fix on the other male's back.

"It's more fun this way," grins Leon, pushing the door open and disappearing with a flick of a leather jacket.

((END. I was inspired by a movie I watched last night and thought I'd churn this out, even though I've got about eighteen other fics I should be working on. I just like writing Cloud and Leon interacting, and I'm sure you can tell by the rest of my fics. Do enjoy!))


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